Bricked RAX50

My first ever post of SNB so please go easy on me.

I have a Netgear RAX50 and I tried to flash a merlin firmware however thing's going well with the new firmware and it didn't boot. Then I hooked up the serial cable and entered the console and I saw it stayed on a line showed as below. Then I typed some default value and it went to the cfe commnad line. Then I enter the command - reset and the router rebooted then it seems bricked(stopping at a line saying wrong memory size specified) as shown in the second photo.


My router has 512MB ram and 256MB flash but it seems the CFE was misconfigured as 8GB ram. I just flashed the firmware and I can't figure out why it can alter the CFE config. The reset button doesn't work at all. I also can't find the JTAG port. I also attached the photos of the board.

Any advice or help is appreciated. Thank you in advance!

You cannot flash/use RMerlin firmware on non-ASUS/NETGEAR routers! Who gave you the stupid idea to flash your RAX50 with Merlin's firmware?

liqili2005 said:

I have a Netgear RAX50 and I tried to flash a merlin firmware however thing's going well with the new firmware and it didn't boot. Then I hooked up the serial cable and entered the console and I saw it stayed on a line showed as below. Then I typed some default value and it went to the cfe commnad line. Then I enter the command - reset and the router rebooted then it seems bricked(stopping at a line saying wrong memory size specified) as shown in the second photo.

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Well - you're probably toast at this point - if you're in warranty, I'd reach out to support and play dumb - "used to work, now it doesn't"

If you don't have a backup for the CFE, you're done unless someone can source one, and then go into rescue mode and load up the netgear firmware - that should get the router up and going, but there's a good chance that you've smoked the RF cal info along the MAC addresses and other useful things.

I do have the backup of mtd0 partition, but I don't have a way to flash it. If I can find the jtag port that would be easy. Currently there is nothing mentioned online about this chipset and it's a black box to me.

I have checked the J2 tag beside the UART tag, it doesn't look like a JTAG as per measurement of the pin voltage.

microchip said:

You cannot flash/use RMerlin firmware on non-ASUS/NETGEAR routers! Who gave you the stupid idea to flash your RAX50 with Merlin's firmware?

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It's my silly idea. I think it shouldn't be that bad it will corrupt the CFE.

I totally bricked my RAX50 using the Netgear IOS app. The router has a build in firmware flash sequence supported by hardware rom (no-flashable = still working after bad flash). Look at the links in this thread: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Ni...wk-RAX50-when-upgrading-firmware/td-p/2116139

You need to pay attention to my last comment in the thread. Timing is everything when trying to flash. I needed some attempts before I got it working.

If you really really really want to run Merlin, this Chinese site has working firmware (I am running it). I figure out that the chinese is already controlling my routers so what the hell. https://fw.koolcenter.com/KoolCenter_Merlin_New_Gen_386/Netgear/RAX50

I flashed the 5.2 chk file.



I have run it in both router and access point mode with great success.

Using Asus firmware non-Asus router is forbidden, including discussion related to it. You can read more about it here

monocle said:

If you really really really want to run Merlin

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then buy an Asus router - there's 3rd party code that is directly licensed to Asus for their hardware only...

As others indicated, Asuswrt and Asuswrt-Merlin are only legally usable on Asus routers. Discussions on running it on other manufacturer's hardware is not allowed on these forums. Locking this.